Operator's Guide to General Purpose Steam Turbines

An Overview of Operating Principles, Construction, Best Practices, and Troubleshooting

When installed and operated properly, general purpose steam turbines are reliable and tend to be forgotten, i.e., out of sound and out of mind. But, they can be sleeping giants that can result in major headaches if ignored. Three real steam turbine undesirable consequences that immediately come to mind are:

• Injury and secondary damage due to an overspeed failure. An overspeed failure on a big steam or gas turbine is one of the most frightening of industrial accidents.
• The high cost of an extensive overhaul due to an undetected component failure. A major steam turbine repair can cost ten or more times that of a garden variety centrifugal pump repair.
• Costly production loses due an extended outage if the driven pump or compressor train is unspared. The value of lost production can quickly exceed repair costs.

A major goal of this book is to provide readers with detailed operating procedure aimed at reducing these risks to minimal levels. Start-ups are complicated by the fact that operators must deal with numerous start-up scenarios, such as:

1. Commissioning a newly installed steam turbine
2. Starting ups after a major steam turbine repair
3. Starting up a proven steam turbine after an outage
4. Overspeed trip testing

It is not enough to simply have a set of procedures in the control room for reference. To be effective, operating procedures must be clearly written down, taught, and practiced—until they become habit.